Eminent Nonentities

Eminent Nonentities, published in 1971, is a collection of short stories by the English author and journalist Alaric Jacob.

Background

Jacob was a Reuters journalist in England and America and a war correspondent during World War II. He wrote several novels and recounted his experiences during the war and in Moscow afterwards. He explains the work by stating that having written about Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Margot Asquith, Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill, Henry Wallace, Wavell, Montgomery, Petain and all the rest, he has "had his fill" of them. He says that the people that interest him are the unknown characters he encountered while roving about. These characters form the basis of the eclectic collection of short stories.

Stories

• Hamilton Despard - touching on Jacob's own his interest in books as a child, the narrator meets Despard an enthusiastic Proustian. Despard's homosexual relationship with another young man apparently ends in tragedy, although the narrator is disinclined to believe his story. Following Despard's own death, the narrator discovers the truth
• Mickey Finn - reflecting Jacob's wartime experiences in Iran, the narrator picks up a Finnish cabaret dancer in Teheran. She repeatedly lets him down at rendezvous and the narrator angered and intrigued tries to understand her, but has to leave Teheran with a weight of unanswered questions.
• A Dream of Gerontius - Henry Gerontius is a successful novelist whose dream is described. Set at the end of the war it posits a Russian occupation of Britain. Gerontius is sought at his club by a Russian officer. He fears arrest, but it turns out he is required as a cultural guide and is taken to help assess the suitability of the Royal Lodge at Windsor as the official residence of the governing Marshal. During the journey the Russian misinterprets English literature and identifies potential members of a British government in an occupied country. However having reached the lodge, the officer concludes that the plebeian taste at the Lodge and the view of the chimneys at Slough render it unsuitable for the Marshal and Gerontius is devastated on recognising the reality of occupation.
• Kultur Kampf - reflecting Jacob's stay in Moscow during the war, this provides the background to Gerontius's dream when the literary Gerontius comes face to face with a Russian general at the end of a heavy evening's drinking at the war correspondent's flat in Moscow. In leading up to this the correspondent has subverted the literary pretensions of Gerontius' wife by upstaging her with a fictitious Shukry Fukhry Bey and horrified the pompous Gerontius by encouraging his vulgar assistant Scutt.
• Comrade Stalin's Cap - Stalin dines with Churchill at the British Embassy and mistakes the press correspondent for a footman, handing him his coat and cap. The correspondent has an affectionate Russian girlfriend Nadya who though poor is too proud to take any presents. However, when he tells her he had Stalin's cap in his hand she is furious that he did not have the imagination to take out the Red Star as a present for her and the relationship ends. Years later he meets another correspondent who knew the girl later but who like others could make no progress with her because she was besotted by the memory of the man who gave her Stalin's star.
• Captain 'Smack On' - Drawing on Jacob's coverage of the North Africa campaign, he introduces Captain Norbury, a former door-to-door salesman, and now a member of the Information Department and the "prize specimen" in the mass of non-combatant forces in Cairo well behind the lines in North Africa. Norbory (nicknamed Smack'on' from his favourite expression) is deputed to accompany the war correspondent in the desert and they come under fire when their vehicle, parked conspicuously on the skyline is silhouetted at dawn, Smack'On and his corporal go on reconnaissance and the attacking guns redeploy. Years later, after examining Hitler's bunker, the war correspondent meets Smack'On in a bar in Berlin sporting a distinctive medal and finds himself invited to dinner at the latter's very luxurious residence. The corporal, also decorated, explains that Smack'On's write up of their exploit in the desert had led to the medal award. However three years later Smack'On is court martialed for black market activities
• A Spent Muse - The author's genial Uncle Eustace, living comfortably in the English countryside off his property, leads a self-contained bachelor life presenting himself a man of no account and having nothing to offer. However a conversation hints that he was a man of feeling and sense. The following day Jacob discovers a hidden set of novels written by his uncle, well reviewed at the time, but now unknown, and understands the torment his uncle suffered in turning off and repressing his literary ambitions.
• Madou - Jacob provides a review of French culture before and after the war. In Paris in the 1930s the narrator had a highly vivacious French girl-friend who was the daughter of a bourgeois couple with a small vineyard in the Dordogne and was betrothed to a poor weak nobleman. He found her lifestyle and Latin temperament thrilling but overwhelming and saw himself as her inferior. After the war, the narrator seeks Madou out when attending a peace conference in Paris and finds her unmarried after a long affair with an aide of de Gaulle. Taken back to Dordogne he revels in the nostalgic French atmosphere but senses that his war adventures and the belief that he is a secret agent has made him attractive to her. However, when he does join the in British Secret Service, he can explain that marrying a foreign national would be impossible and she eventually marries the nobleman.
• A Woman of S.W.3 - describes a classy young woman who is left wealthy as a result of two marriages and has a string of relationships. The narrator knew her as a school friend of his sister but now finds her in a bar in Sloane Square on a mysterious assignment. It turns out that she is having an affair with a West Indian bus driver. Her initial enthusiasm for the relationship in defiance of convention of the times turns to disappointment when he becomes just like any other man.

The illustrations for the stories in the original edition are by Philippe Jullian.

References

• Alaric Jacob Eminent Nonentities The Galahad Press 1971